


it's an effed up world

by junietuesday25



Series: BMQ Entries [5]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Blood and Violence, Gen, Zombie Apocalypse, also we go into the actual game so here are the tags for that:, not SUPER bad but. it's there, takes place during tpg, the original characters are for aotd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23508778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junietuesday25/pseuds/junietuesday25
Summary: But it's a two-player game. Both for Michael and Jeremy, and the characters withinApocalypse of the Damned.
Relationships: Michael Mell & Jeremy Heere, Original Character & Original Character
Series: BMQ Entries [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675906
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	it's an effed up world

**Author's Note:**

> turn on workskin for this fic? it's not STRICTLY necessary but i think it looks cooler if you do

Michael is concerned when Jeremy throws open the door to his car and dumps his backpack inside haphazardly, slumping in his seat. Once it’s been a few moments after Jeremy closed the door and he still hasn’t put on his seatbelt, Michael has to remind him. 

“Oh,” says Jeremy, and buckles his seatbelt. Michael doesn’t start driving.

“Are you okay?” Michael asks, and Jeremy bites his lip. He sighs.

“I’ll tell you at my house,” Jeremy says. “Not right now. Okay?”

“Alright,” says Michael, because he knows Jeremy always spills sooner or later. Usually sooner, because he likes to vent his feelings out to Michael, but even “later” isn’t too long. Michael doesn’t mind waiting it out.

* * *

Jeremy’s mostly calmed down as they head upstairs to Jeremy’s room, where his TV is hooked up to all their consoles—Jeremy used to just have his Xbox here, but he painstakingly transferred the other ones up after Jeremy’s dad started hogging the living room’s TV.

“What d’you wanna play?” asks Jeremy.

“ _Apocalypse of the Damned_!” Michael says immediately. “We just have to beat the cafeteria and we’re practically home free, I think the rest of the end is more storyline than anything.”

Michael settles himself on Jeremy’s bed while Jeremy finds the disc for the game, watching Jeremy, trying to puzzle out what had him in such a bad mood. Maybe it was play rehearsal? Did Jeremy embarrass himself there? Was it specifically a Christine thing or a “everyone there” thing?

“Okay, here,” says Jeremy, snapping Michael out of his thoughts as he sits down next to Michael and hands him a controller—the controller without the rubber cover, because it feels bad and almost sticky on his hands, especially when they get really into it and his hands start sweating from the tight grip on the controller. Jeremy likes the cool designs of his case with swirly blue and pink designs, though, because trans fucking rights.

Jeremy opens _Apocalypse of the Damned_ , clicking through the menu to start their save file—they haven’t beaten it yet, so this is only their first one, but the game holds up to three. Which is lucky for if they decide to try to beat it again.

“Remember the plan?” Michael says, leaning forward and adjusting his grip.

“Got it,” says Jeremy, and he’s fully grinning as the level boots up, their characters spawning as the world generates around them—Michael takes his determination as a victory compared to his earlier sullenness. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Piper peered into the mall, shining a flashlight into the dark, abandoned depths of what used to be Franklin Mall. She remembered the first time she’d battled zombies here—frantic swings of her backpack against a zombie’s head, knocking it to the ground, letting Dylan stomp on its skull, both of them cringing away at the sickening _crack._

She was even wearing that same backpack now, along with a gray hoodie. It kept her warm, and wasn’t so baggy that it allowed zombies to grab her, but enough that they’d have a hard time getting their teeth to her skin around the folds of fabric. But they had grown more used to the apocalypse, too, and were better equipped—now they had proper weapons, stolen from empty buildings such as this one; but it wasn’t really _stealing_ , was it, if there was no one to steal from?

“Coast looks clear,” said Piper, turning the flashlight’s brightness down even lower. “Be careful, though.”

“Yup,” Dylan whispered back, and they carefully maneuvered the previously-automatic glass door open to slip inside. The mall was reportedly swarming with zombies in many spots (which was why they’d made a map to consult for this outing) but that meant no one had tried to loot the areas deeper into the mall, especially the cafeteria—Piper knew that much of the food at those restaurants would be rotten, but there had to be some canned meats and pasta left for them to take. They were getting desperate, their old stock of food quickly running out.

Piper and Dylan crept through the mall in silence, navigating around empty planters that used to hold trees, blank displays that were once electronic advertisements and maps, and metal tables and chairs scattered around for small cafés and restaurants, away from the cafeteria. Piper glanced down at her map every so often, making sure they weren’t walking straight into a horde of zombies, but it was mostly unnecessary—they would hear the zombies, anyway. But better safe than sorry.

“Should we check those restaurants too?” Dylan asked, the quiet words feeling so dangerously loud in the near silence, broken only by distant shuffling and groans of the zombies and the chirps of birds that had made it into the mall somehow.

“Wouldn’t those be looted already?” said Piper, glancing around warily. They were in the middle of an open space, easy to be attacked from all sides and become overwhelmed. She didn’t see or hear any zombies close enough to attack them, but you could never be truly sure.

“It couldn’t hurt to check,” said Dylan. “In for a penny, in for a pound, right? We’re here, might as well look everywhere.”

Piper conceded the point. They ducked into an old diner, hoping for the best.

* * *

Michael directs his character to the kitchen’s door, but dialogue pops up along the bottom, a disgruntled sprite of Dylan appearing on the left of the screen.

> Shit, it’s locked.

“There’s probably nothing even here,” says Jeremy, moving his own character to the door. “We should just go straight to the cafeteria.”

“No, what if we miss something important?” Michael argues. “We’ll probably just have to find a key.”

He moves his character behind the diner’s front register, and squats down to dig through the shelves under the counter. It’s empty save for dust and a purse full of cash, for some reason; Michael stands up and turns back to the door, not even bothering with the money. He’d taken some money before, but he carried it around for about five levels before realizing it’s just a waste of inventory space.

Regardless. There has to be a key hook or something, right?

Jeremy sighs, and goes to help. Annoyingly good at finding things, Jeremy passes a random table by the entrance to the kitchen, and the outline of the key flares bright red. Jeremy picks it up.

“Here, this has to be it,” says Jeremy. And sure enough, when he presses B next to the door, the lock clicks, and Jeremy can push the door open.

However, Michael’s elation quickly dies when the back room’s shelves are totally empty. 

“Dammit,” he says, poking through the racks of nothing. “Not even a story thing?”

“Nope,” Jeremy says. “I told you.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Michael says, but then he finds an abandoned knife on the floor, its outline lighting up as his own expression does the same. “Ha ha, look! Wasn’t useless after all!”

> **New Item: Butcher’s Knife (+15 Damage)**  
>  _Was it used for cutting up meat, or cutting up bodies? Who knows. Do zombies count as both or neither?_

“That’s good, my other knife was basically dead, can I have it?” says Jeremy, and Michael passes it over. “Cool. Now let’s go, we’re gonna beat that horde of zombies if it kills us.”

* * *

Piper brandished her newfound knife, testing its weight. It felt fine, and looked sharp too.

“So not a total waste,” said Piper, sticking her knife into the makeshift leather sheath at her hip. She and Dylan started back on their path toward the cafeteria, quiet as they hugged the walls, the darkness and near silence unnerving, even after months in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Piper used to be afraid of the dark, and while she didn’t quite have that luxury now, darkness still made her nervous—and not for no reason, anymore.

They went silent when they heard the groan of a zombie, too loud to be echoing from a distance like the other sounds.

“You ready?” Piper asked under her breath, pulling out her new knife. Dylan nodded beside her, and that was when the zombie rushed out of the shadows and lunged for Dylan, who was closest.

Dylan kicked the zombie back to give himself room to maneuver the switchblade in his hand, dragging the blade down through its flesh, causing it to rear back. Piper used the opportunity to slam her knife down into the zombie’s skull, only stopping when her blade hit hard bone. The zombie crashed to the ground, and Dylan stomped on its head to kill the brain—zombies would come back and fight again through anything except a damaged brain.

For a moment, Piper and Dylan panted, staring at each other. Then Piper went in to inspect the corpse, making sure it was properly dead.

That’s when she noticed the face.

“Oh my god,” she said, and all of a sudden the blood on her hands felt all too real—not only physically, her hands slick with the blood from the kill, but metaphorically. “Oh my god, I’m sorry.”

“What?” said Dylan, leaning over, and then he, too, stopped. “We killed Maya’s dad??”

One of their best friends’ dad, who’d always made them cookies for sleepovers and picked them up from school if any of their own parents couldn’t make it and made them home-made hats, was now dead. Because Piper had killed him.

“No,” Piper said, and swallowed down tears. “No, he was already dead. We were just protecting ourselves, he would have asked us to do it.”

“Right,” Dylan breathed. “Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “We should get moving, shouldn’t stay too long here.”

* * *

“Damn, that’s hardcore,” Michael says as the cutscene ends. “D’you think we’re close?”

“…Yeah,” says Jeremy, shaking his head, and Michael looks at him.

“Do you wanna, um. Talk about it?”

Jeremy doesn’t reply for a moment, directing his character to keep moving through the mall, and Michael scrambles after him. But then Jeremy sighs.

“Rich told me about this drug that makes you cool,” he blurts out finally. “He’ll sell it to me because his squip told him I ‘wasn’t such a bad guy.’”

Michael blinks.

“Rich _Goranski?_ ” Michael says incredulously. “Drug that makes you cool? ‘Told him’? There’s a lot to unpack there but—”

“Okay, so, like, squips are this supercomputer you take as a pill and then it goes into your brain and like, tells you what to do to be cool?” Jeremy says, focused on the “Attention Meter” in the top right of the TV screen that’s flickering up to a pale yellow of “be careful!”, due to both of their distractions. “He said he’ll sell me one for six hundred bucks.”

Michael’s eyebrows shoot straight up. “Uh, dude? He’s totally scamming you, what the fuck.”

“What if it’s not?” Jeremy says, and Michael just stares at him. “This could be huge! All I have to do is give the guy…who torments me…six hundred…”

Michael gives him a pointed look.

“Okay, yeah, he’s totally scamming me.” Jeremy sighs. “I’m doomed to be a loser ‘til the end of the universe. No, probably even then too.”

Michael pauses the game, putting his hands on Jeremy’s shoulders.

“You don’t need that—that electronic tic tac anyway. You’re already cool. Cooler than cool. Cooler than a vintage cassette.”

“Cooler than a vintage cassette,” Jeremy repeats, controller still held tightly in his lap.

“Duh,” says Michael, turning back to the game and unpausing it. “You know vintage cassettes are, like, the height of cool.”

“Yeah, to literally no one but you,” says Jeremy, keeping his eyes on the screen as a sign reading “CAFETERIA →” comes into view. “But, _I’m_ cool to literally no one but you. So I guess it fits.”

“Don’t worry,” assures Michael. “Just wait ‘til we get to college. Then our out-of-print games and retro skates will be cool, and—oh shit, here we go.”

* * *

Piper’s heart sped up when she spotted the crowd of zombies ambling through the cafeteria, bumping against tables and each other. She turned to Dylan.

“We can’t do this,” she said, breaths picking up too. “Oh my god what are we _thinking_ —”

“It’s okay,” Dylan said, trying to reassure. “We can do this. The zombies are spread thin in a large space. If we can assassinate a few without drawing the attention of the main horde, we can pick them off one by one to a manageable amount to fight melee if we run out of ammo. They stay down for about twenty minutes after being shot somewhere that’d kill a human, if we’re fast enough we can knock them all down and then go around dealing final blows while they’re hurt. We got this. All right?”

Piper took a deep breath, appreciating that at least she’d had a friend through this apocalypse. That she _had_ a friend—they weren’t gonna die yet. Piper couldn’t let Dylan die, after all they’d been through together.

“You’re right,” she said. “How much ammo do you have?”

Dylan reached into his backpack, loading his gun. “Enough for about three-fourths of them, closer to half if I miss a few.” He paused. “But I won’t miss.”

“Great,” said Piper, pulling out her own gun. “I’ve got the same. Let’s do this.”

They crept closer. Gunshots didn’t seem to bother zombies, but if they heard human or animal noises (breathing, swallows, etc.), you could consider yourself dead right there if you didn’t know how to fight. Their vision was scarily sharp, too—good thing Piper and Dylan had practice melting into the shadows and ducking behind objects, because since zombies’ sense of smell seemed to be nonexistent, all you had to do was stay silent and out of their lines of sight.

Piper cocked her gun, targeting a zombie that was a bit separated from the rest of the crowd.

* * *

Jeremy stares, and Michael watches as Jeremy tries to line up the gun’s barrel with the zombie he’s aiming at while keeping the Attention Meter as low as possible. But Jeremy seems distracted—he twitches the joystick too far, and his character stumbles out of the shelter of the low wall they’re hiding behind. Immediately, the Attention Meter flares straight up into a bright red as the zombies rush at them.

Michael and Jeremy do their best to recover, but there are too many zombies, and they don’t have enough room to operate any decent weapons.

“Watch out!”

“Ahh!”

“ _No!_ ”

Soon enough, the “GAME OVER” screen appears, and Michael sighs as he flops back onto Jeremy’s bed. At least they saved as soon as they’d arrived at the cafeteria, but it’s still annoying.

“Try again?” Jeremy asks, finger already on the A button to hit the option with the same name.

Michael props himself up on an elbow to look at Jeremy.

“Are you still thinking about that pill thing?” he asks. “Because you really, really shouldn’t go for it, it sounds like serious trouble.”

Jeremy huffs out a breath, still staring at the TV. “I know you think it’s fake, but I…I don’t know. I just want to—I don’t—I don’t know. I wish I wasn’t a loser. I know I have you, but I—I want other people to like me too?”

Michael frowns. “You’re not a loser,” he says. “Maybe no one else at this school knows it, but you’re super cool to me. And to everyone else when we get to college.”

“You already said that,” says Jeremy, mood seemingly not lifted whatsoever. “We’re not in college yet. I have to wait another two years.”

“But—”

“Can we just keep playing?” Jeremy says, and without waiting for an answer, he hits “TRY AGAIN?”. Michael scrambles to sit upright as they respawn at the entrance to the cafeteria, where the zombies are back to their old positions.

* * *

Piper cocked her gun, targeting a zombie that was a bit separated from the rest of the crowd. Carefully, she aimed at its heart, and then fired, the loud _bang_ echoing in her ears as the zombie went down. A twin _crack_ broke the air beside her, Dylan’s own bullet sending another zombie crashing to the floor.

They made quick work of the rest of the zombies after that. Zombies didn’t tend to notice their brethren, so they didn’t try to escape as Piper and Dylan brought them down one by one. Quickly, before their twenty minutes were up, Piper and Dylan rushed out to fully take down the zombies by damaging their brains. 

Though the kills weren’t exactly as difficult as she’d been afraid of, her heart was still racing as she collapsed at a cafeteria table. Her sneakers left dark footprints on the tile of the mall, from the not-quite-blood of the zombies they’d killed.

“Okay,” Piper said, still panting as she unloaded her gun and put it in her backpack. “Okay. Can we just—”

“Yeah,” said Dylan, and Piper was even more grateful to him, not just for this, but for everything he’d done. “We’ll take a breather.”

They only had time to rest a minute, though. Acutely aware of the fact that they were dangerously exposed in this mall, Piper got to her feet, saying, “Let’s—”

* * *

“Son? Son?”

Jeremy’s jaw sets as the door opens, and Mr. Heere enters the room with all of the confidence of a man wearing nothing but boxers, a ratty, hole-filled white t-shirt, and a gray bathrobe.

“Dad,” Jeremy groans. “Pants?”

“Is it a girl?” Mr. Heere says excitedly. “Are you in here with a girl?”

Michael leans around behind Jeremy’s back, smiling sheepishly. If he’s honest, he’d rather be anywhere else but here right now. He wants to go downstairs or something and avoid this confrontation, but that’d be rude, so he’s stuck here to witness this painful interaction.

“Hey, Mr. Heere.”

“Oh.” Mr. Heere visibly deflates. “Hi, Michael.” He tries to perk back up, putting on a strained smile. “I was gonna order pizza? If there’s something you boys want—”

“Did you get dressed today?” Jeremy cuts him off, anger tinging his tone. Michael grabs the first comic book from Jeremy’s headboard shelves his hand lands on and opens it up, staring down at its pages like they hold all the secrets of the universe. “Like, at all?”

“They didn’t need me at the office. So I worked from home?”

“Most people wear _pants_ at home,” Jeremy says tightly.

“That’s why most people…aren’t your dad!”

Michael glances up to see Mr. Heere awkwardly fingergun. Mr. Heere looks so desperate for someone to give him an out. Michael feels kind of bad, or he would if he didn’t know how much Jeremy’s health and general well-being has been neglected over the past few months. The tension is palpable, thick enough to be chopped through with the butcher’s knife from _Apocalypse of the Damned_.

“Good talk,” Mr. Heere says, lowering his arms. He quietly backs out of the room and shuts the door behind him.

Jeremy lets out a sigh and turns back to the TV. Piper’s dialogue box is still on the screen, since neither he nor Michael had clicked through to close it.

> Let’s get moving.

“Fitting,” Jeremy scoffs, reading the words. Michael’s stomach twists. “But Dad won’t get that message.”

“How is he doing?” Michael says softly, looking sideways at Jeremy.

“How does it look?” Jeremy snaps. He’s clenching and unclenching his fingers around his controller, one finger at a time, forming a wave. Michael’s not even sure why he’s noticing it.

“You heard from her?” Michael asks carefully. Jeremy scowls.

“No. And who cares?” Jeremy seems to realize what his hands are doing, and stops, gripping the controller tight. “It’s like, Mom moved on, why can’t he?”

Michael doesn’t mention that Jeremy still checks his email and phone every day for a call or text or any kind of message from her since she left. He also doesn’t mention that sometimes he still has to comfort Jeremy about how his mom left, and reassure Jeremy that it wasn’t his fault. He doesn’t mention that Mr. Heere deserves maybe a little bit of credit, considering his wife just walked out on him, either.

“Hey,” Michael starts instead, but is cut off by a loud outburst from Jeremy.

“I don’t want that to be my future!” Jeremy turns to face Michael. “Sad, and alone, and—Rich said his hookup’s at Payless. What if we go there ourselves? Just—just to see if the story checks out.”

“And what if it does?” Michael says, avoiding Jeremy’s eyes and staring straight at the TV instead, at the soft edges and warm colors of Piper’s sprite along the left of the screen. “Will you be too cool for—” Michael cuts himself off, and finishes lamely, holding up his controller, “…Video games?”

The thought is clingy and stupid, but he can’t help but think that maybe when Jeremy’s finally cool, he’ll just…leave. Michael doesn’t really have anyone else, and normally he’s okay with that, but though he’s always been seen as antisocial and has claimed that he’s a loner at heart, he likes having a friend. But maybe that friend doesn’t feel the same way.

Michael doesn’t move for a moment. But then he feels Jeremy nudge his arm, and looks up.

“You’re my favorite person,” says Jeremy, sincerely, and Michael feels warmth toward him well up in his heart. “Okay? Like, even if I get cool, you’re still my best friend.”

“Aw,” Michael says, because there’s no way he’s admitting that he may or may not be a little bit about to cry, but like, in a good way. He grabs Jeremy’s arm, leaning his head on his shoulder. “Am I really your _favwite pewson?_ ”

“Michael, we were just having a moment,” Jeremy snorts, as Michael doubles over laughing. Before long, Jeremy is choking on laughter too, and they end up collapsed against each other, gasping for breath.

“Okay, we’ll go,” says Michael, once they’ve recovered and can once again breathe normally. “I mean, without me, you’d probably just stutter and stutter at the Payless guy ‘til you go red and run away to hyperventilate.”

“Screw you,” says Jeremy. “Loser.”

“I’m wounded,” says Michael, putting a hand to his chest and blinking rapidly. “Twelve whole years of deep, intimate friendship, and this is how you treat me? Oh, the pain, my poor heart—”

Jeremy shoves him, laughing. “You’re so weird.”

“And don’t you forget it.” Michael grins, picking up his controller again. “Now come on, let’s beat this level.”

* * *

Piper got to her feet, saying, “Let’s get going.”

She and Dylan crossed to the restaurant they thought they had a decent shot at finding food from, an old Italian place that sold multiple kinds of pasta, according to the menu on a display across the top of the stall. There was no way they made their pasta from scratch, being a place jammed into the food court of a mall, so there had to be boxes leftover, right? They could last a long time on simple boiled pasta, even if they didn’t find any decent sauce or even butter—not that Piper expected to find any that wasn’t rotten. 

“Oh hell yeah!” said Dylan, and Piper looked over to see none other than a whole drawer filled with bags of pasta. She beamed at him.

“Fuck yeah!” she said, and immediately started shoving them into the extra bag she’d brought along for any food they’d find. It was enough to fill the whole thing. “We can stretch this…a few months before we have to come back?”

“Let’s set up camp in the woods nearby,” said Dylan. “So we can see if anyone comes in and tries to loot this place in case there’s more stuff.”

“Awesome,” said Piper, and grinned at Dylan.

They were surviving. They could do this.

**Author's Note:**

> i had a LOT of fun w the format for this. i originally made the skin for a whole fic based around the concept of telling the story of michael and jeremy side-by-side w the story of the characters in aotd, and while idk if i'll ever really do anything w that, i'm still glad i got to use the idea for this fic. also this is officially the longest fic i've written for bmq at almost 4k words!! yay!!


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